In 2004, I wrote a whistle-blowing book RIP-OFF! The Scandalous Inside Story of the Management Consulting Money Machine. I sent the book to all the main literary agents and got enough pre-printed refusal letters to wallpaper a medium-sized house. But just as I was about to give up, one agent actually read my book and offered to represent me. (The fact that this agent takes the time to look at all submissions, however awful many of them are, may be the reason this agent has been the world’s best-selling agent for the last four years)

However, getting an agent is only half the battle and although my agent was convinced my book would sell, he couldn’t get any publishers to buy it. That left me with a difficult choice – bin the book or publish it myself. In those days there wasn’t any CreateSpace. So I set up my own publishing company, The Original Book Company, with myself, Neil Glass, as CEO, secretary, PR person, cleaner and general gofor. Then, to disguise that this book was a self publish, I invented a name for the author – David Craig.

As the book was quite controversial, I was fortunate enough to get some journalists writing articles about it and have sold about 8,000 copies.